How are disasters defined?

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Aside from various perspectives of supernatural beings and their motivations in harming us, decades of science explain that the phrase “natural disaster” is a misnomer and should not be used. Fundamentally, disasters are caused by vulnerability, the political process of denying people the resources, opportunities, and choices to improve their situations in dealing with difficult circumstances.

Disasters emerge from choice, and from lack of choice, of our living conditions, places of abode, livelihoods, and abilities to deal with nature’s phenomena, such as tornadoes and earthquakes. A tornado or earthquake cannot be a disaster since some people, infrastructure, and livelihoods manage without harm, and some do not. The environment does not make these choices. People with power do, meaning that disasters do not come from nature even though the tornado and earthquakes do.

Not being “natural” disasters, the deaths, damage, and disruption are simply disasters. They occur because some people and institutions make decisions that harm others and, ultimately, everyone, including themselves.

These decisions happen over the long term. It is hard to build overnight a city that collapses in an earthquake or is flattened by a tornado.

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